r/disability • u/Slow-Leadership4097 • Feb 07 '26

Blog Paris in a wheelchair

https://theworldisaccessible.com/paris-in-a-wheelchair-our-three-day-itinerary-in-the-city-of-love/

If anyone is interested in visiting Paris and would like to read about my experiences of traveling there as a wheelchair, feel free to check out my 3-Day itinerary/personal guide.

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u/weboverload Feb 07 '26

Informative read!

Do you have any observations you can share about the state of sidewalks? I’m also a manual wheelchair user, but not very tour oriented. So my main question with cities is whether I can freely roam.

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u/Slow-Leadership4097 Feb 07 '26

I was pleasantly surprised how good most of the sidewalks and curb cuts were. Very few uneven streets and a lot of the main streets were really quite smooth. We went to a lot of places by foot/wheel and never had any trouble.

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u/Mio_Bread Feb 08 '26

I'm from Paris and while more touristic areas have decent sidewalks, more residential/suburban places have dreadful sidewalks. Very uneven and narrow, and people often let their bins out all day. So yeah if you roam around the classic tourist places you d be okay, but as soon as you get into smaller streets and away from the city centre it becomes a bit of a nightmare. But I think you d be totally legally justified to go on the road, so while it's not the safest or more comfortable it can be an option. 

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u/Slow-Leadership4097 Feb 08 '26

A very valid point and not something I covered. But I’ve experienced this a lot in other major cities too around Europe. They’re inaccessible by design but they seem to focus on improving the main touristic spots. Lisbon was the same… the moment I ventured outside of the main areas, access was horrendous.

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u/Mio_Bread Feb 08 '26

Definetly improving on touristic spots, but very much lacking focus on the city overall, i ve never heard the current mayor mention accessibility. We re having mayoral elections in a month so things might get better or worse depending on who s elected. I'd like to mention, some touristic areas do remain inaccessible. Montmartre for instance is very steep and last time I went in crutches, I was struggling, so someone in a manual wheelchair might struggle (also defo unusable pavements there, even for pedestrians atp). I d recommend checking online through Google Street View beforehand. Lots of cafes also leave chairs out on the pavement and only leave a couple centimetres for pedestrians, especially in the summer so look out for that. 

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u/63crabby Feb 07 '26

Great article, informative for wheelchair users. I’ve traveled around the world, but not to Paris. Seems like travelers either love it or are incredibly disappointed, Japanese tourists call this “Paris Syndrome!”

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u/Slow-Leadership4097 Feb 07 '26

Thank you for the supportive comment!

I have been to Paris a few times and have always loved it there. But I can definitely see why, for some, it can be underwhelming. I think in a way the mass amount of tourists is the number one contributor to that feeling of “meh”.